Somalia

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
It's not a strawman. It's the inevitable logical result of the arguments that claim to show that law, property rights, and contract cannot exist in the absence of a coercive monopolist producer and enforcer thereof. <font color="red"> gibberish. It isnt the least bit an inevitable logical result. </font>

But apparently the statists on this board, including Copernicus, are now happy to concede that law, property rights, contract, and the social order and economic development that arises therefrom can all exist in the absence of governments. So there's nothing more to argue about.

[/ QUOTE ] <font color="red">what there is to argue about is which is the way those ends can be achieved, and theoretical achievcement of those ends under anarchy has never been disputed. What has been disputed is whether those ends can be achieved more effieciently through a state than anarchy, and whether anarchy can even exist in this real world. Anarchy has never existed for more than a brief period. Send a bunch of kids out to play and a "government" in one form or another arises in a matter of hours. Voluntarism is a phantom in the real world and it has never been demontratred to be anything more than that. A logical thinker would be embarassed to roll out Somalia as an example of ACs possibilities, which, even if it wasnt your intent (which I dont believe, you backtracked off it when you couldnt support it any longer), it was clearly the intent of the article. You have demonstrated that youre beyond embarassment, but mises does itself no service with that article. </font>